For Your Paws Only by Heather Vogel Frederick

them.”
    â€œGot it,” said B-Nut. “Be careful, Sis.” He scrambled up the wire that held the wreath to the wall and disappeared through a ventilation grate.
    â€œYes, Glory,” Bunsen’s worried voice echoed in her headset. “Watch your back!”
    â€œHappy to watch it for her, mate,” Hotspur chimed in.
    This was greeted with silence from Bunsen.
    Glory rolled her eyes and aimed her pen at a wreath a few yards down the wall. “If we get the trajectory just right, we should be able to pull this off,” she said. Her bright little eyes narrowed as she calculated the distance between the wreath in which she was hidden, the one directly over Stilton Piccadilly, and a third a little farther down.
    Glory glanced over at Hotspur. This was a dangerous maneuver, and she’d never teamed up with him before. Could she trust him, or was he just in it for the spotlight? She couldn’t risk any foolhardy heroics. There were lives at stake—spy-mouse lives. Still, two mice were definitely better than one for what she was about to attempt. It was a risk she’d have to take.
    She pulled the trigger, and her dental floss harpoon soared across the wall. “At least we’ll have the element of surprise on our side.”
    â€œSometimes that’s enough,” said Hotspur, pulling the trigger on his pen too. His harpoon flew off, burying itself beside Glory’s in the middle wreath.
    â€œNice shot,” said Glory.
    â€œThink so? You should have seen me last September in Moscow. I had to—”
    â€œNot now, Hotspur,” said Glory, cutting him short. She plucked a small triangular blade from her backpack. It was a lapel knife, another World War II invention, this one designed to be hidden in the lapel of a uniform and used as a last resort in close combat. Humans held them between their thumb and forefinger, but the blades were just the right size for mouse paws and standard issue for Silver Skateboard agents. “Ready?”
    â€œReady,” said Hotspur, holding up a blade of his own. “Or as the Bard says, ‘A rescue! A rescue!’ ”
    The two mice clipped their twin lines of floss through the carabiners on their utility belts and leaped from the wreath. Down, down, down they dropped. The floss caught them just a few inches above the floor and they swung, Tarzan-style, directly toward the cluster of rats.
    Piccadilly had his back to them, his tail still slashing back and forth viciously. Moving in tandem, Glory and Hotspur swung boldly through the middle of the crowd.As they passed over Bubble and Squeak, they leaned down and simultaneously sliced through the lengths of twine that held their colleagues captive.
    â€œNoon, upstairs!” Glory murmured to the British agents, and then up, up, and away from the rats she swung. She and Hotspur swept like twin pendulums toward the third wreath, and as the two of them leaped into the greenery and reeled in their floss, Bubble and Squeak lost no time scampering to safety below.
    â€œ Zut alors! ” cried Brie. “What was zat?”
    The rats gaped at each other in astonishment. They’d been caught completely off guard. They’d barely had time to register the sudden appearance of the two flying mice before they were gone again.
    Dupont’s red eyes narrowed. He lifted his snout and sniffed the air speculatively. “An old enemy, if I’m not mistaken,” he replied. “A Goldenleaf, to be exact.”
    â€œWhere are my mice!” shouted Piccadilly, whipping around to find nothing but twine attached to his tail. “They took my mice!”
    â€œShe’s too quick for you, obviously, old chap,” sneered Dupont. “She didn’t get away so fast the last time she tangled with me.”
    â€œIs that so?” sneered his British rival right back. “As I recall, old chap, it was that very mouse and her friends who gave you a bath in